Sunday, March 12, 2017

IRAQ - In Kirkuk, the political and Christian Social components try to unite into a single Council

The appeal repeatedly launched by Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I to
Iraqi Christians not to proceed "in random order" on the political and
social ground, but to try to merge their forces in one "component" is
beginning to have its first effects: on Monday, March 6, the creation of
a "Council" of Christian communities that proposes itself as a liaison
between the different political and social organizations animated by
Christian militants, able to act as a unitary speaker of the political
and institutional bodies of the Province, took shape in Kirkuk.

The initiative was also supported by local political leaders, starting
from Kurdish Rebwar Talabani, the current president of the provincial
council of Kirkuk: the new body - said Talabani - will be able to give a
positive contribution not only with regard to the condition of
Christian communities, but also to recreate and favor the peaceful and
cooperative co-existence between different ethnic and religious
components of society.

Even Pastor Haitham Jazrawi, head of the
Evangelical Christian community in Kirkuk, is satisfied that the
initiative of a single organism able to unite the Christian components
at a social and political level can represent a positive new element in
the present, problematic condition experienced by the Iraqi Christian
community.
Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako has repeatedly stressed that the
situation of emergency in the entire Iraqi nation also calls Christians
not to proceed in random order, avoiding to emphasize in an exasperated
manner the identity factors of each ecclesial community.

The Primate of
the Chaldean Church had already suggested members of the different
national Christian communities to express a unified position on the
political and social processes taking place in Iraq, presenting oneself
as "Christian component".

The use of the expression "Christian people"
to express the unified position of Iraqi Christians in relation to
political and social events and national institutions, according to the
Primate of the Chaldean Church "does not come into conflict with the
protection of millenary identity", and allows you to "not to waste time
arguing" around this heritage identity.